


and you swear it's all gone

by iwillbeyourgoal



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Unrequited Love, general sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 17:48:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwillbeyourgoal/pseuds/iwillbeyourgoal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>louis has nightmares so harry has him list his favorite things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and you swear it's all gone

**Author's Note:**

> not as fluffy as i'm making it seem!!! louis is in love with eleanor and harry is in unrequited love with louis and it's all very depressing i really don't know why i keep doing this to myself

Harry was woken up by Liam shaking him gently. “Hmm? Time izzit?” he mumbled, rolling over to look at his alarm clock. It was 2:49. He groaned. “What’s wrong?”

“Lou’s had another nightmare, Harry. You’ve gotta help him, he won’t go back to sleep if you don’t,” Liam whispered.

Harry frowned, rolling out of bed and leaning on Liam when his head rush kicked in. This was something he’d done countless times; he knew the drill.

Louis had trouble sleeping sometimes. He had a lot of nightmares of the classic variety—monsters chasing him down dark corridor with no ends, falling forever, the walls of his bedroom closing in on and destroying him. The boys knew this—one time Zayn fell off of his bed because Louis was screaming so loudly in the room over.

The bad dreams had increased in frequency lately for some reason, with Harry having to make the trek to Louis’ room two or three times per week. Were it practically anyone else he’d be tired of it, but he would walk to Ecuador if Louis needed him to, truth be told.

He wasn’t reasonable after he woke up, either. He would lock his door and tell whoever was on the other side to go get Harry. The youngest boy was (not surprisingly) the only one who could calm him down after these episodes, rubbing his back or just singing Coldplay quietly until Louis drifted off to sleep again.

Harry reached Louis’ room and rapped his knuckles softly on the door. “Louis? It’s me,” he whispered, his voice low and raspy with sleep.

He heard the turning of the tumbler in the lock and the door opened slowly.

Louis looked like absolute shit. His eyes were bloodshot, the bags under them were dark and deep, and his hair was matted to his forehead with sweat. The shirt that he was wearing was crumpled and drenched, too, and hung a little too loosely off him—he’d lost weight since the nightmares began. Harry wanted to pick him up and hold him, tell him everything was going to be okay, that he was here now.

But he couldn’t.

See, it wasn’t exactly ‘okay’ to be in love with your best friend, who was currently in a Very Committed Straight Relationship with a gorgeous, sweet, all-around great girl. Harry honestly couldn’t find it in him to hate Eleanor because she was such a sweetheart. She also made Louis incredibly happy, and who was Harry to ruin that?

But he knew in the not-so-back of his mind he could make him happier. He knew everything about the boy, from his favorite flavor of yogurt (peach) to which Avenger was his favorite (Iron Man). He knew things about Louis that Eleanor probably never would. And that broke his heart.

Louis smiled at him, but it was just a hollow gesture. “Hey, buddy,” he said quietly.

“Another nightmare?”

He nodded, eyes shadowed. “You were in this one.”

Harry’s brow furrowed and he frowned. “I—I was?”

Louis nodded again, and sat down on his bed. “I had died, and you were in bed—you, you hadn’t left since I died, because you were so depressed and you had just given up all hope,” he said, and his voice sounded like he was about to cry. Harry listened solemnly. “And I was a ghost or something, and I came to you and I told you that it was okay to move on, to be strong, and you should move on with your life, but you—you wouldn’t believe me, Harry, you kept telling me I wasn’t real, and that you were imagining me, and—” His voice broke and he clung to Harry’s shirt and buried his face in his shoulder.

“Shh, shh,” Harry said, rubbing his back. “It’s not real, Lou. It’s okay.”

“It seemed so real, though,” he whispered, and Harry felt the tears soak through the fabric of his t-shirt.

“Tell you what,” he said, pulling back and looking at Louis. “I’m going to tell you a favorite thing of mine, and then you’re going to tell me one of yours, and we’ll go back and forth till you fall asleep. It’ll make you feel better and it’ll be boring enough to help you get to sleep.”

Louis smiled a little, tired smile. “Nothing about you could bore me, mate.”

Harry’s heart lurched at that. “Thanks, Lou.”

The older boy adjusted himself in bed, getting under the covers and wrapping himself in a cocoon of sheets until just his head was showing. Harry wanted nothing more than to climb in with him, to feel the curvature and the rise and fall of his body and to kiss away all the tension built up in those muscles.

But he clenched his fist until his nails left crescent shapes in his palms to stop him from touching, and he just sat on the edge of the bed, facing Louis.

“You go first,” Louis said.

Harry thought of something to say that didn’t have to do with Louis—your hair your eyes when you laugh the way you can’t dance how you tell me secrets—but it was so, so hard.

“Er… the feeling of stepping on a crunchy leaf,” he settled on.

Louis smiled. “That’s a good one. Uhm… I love getting hugs from the twins on both of my legs when I go home.”

Harry’s heart swelled, and if he thought he couldn’t love this stupid boy any more than he already did, boy was he wrong.

Nudging Harry with his leg, Louis said, “Your turn.”

He snapped out of his lovesick reverie. “Right. Uhm. The smell of croissants.”

“Elton John songs.”

“The episode of Friends where Joey reads Little Women.”

“When fans ask how you are.”

And on and on it went, until Louis could barely keep his eyes open and Harry was lying next to him (at a reasonable ‘of course I’m straight’ distance).

It was Louis’ turn. “I like… Eleanor,” he said sleepily, and Harry snapped awake, his stomach churning.

“El—Eleanor? What about her?” he asked, but he wasn’t sure why—he’d rather jump out of a plane with no parachute than hear this.

“Mmm… everything,” he said, closing his curling up into a little ball. “ ‘M sleepy now. Thanks, Harry. Night.”

Harry’s eyes were filling with tears and he managed to choke out a “good night” before he rushed out of the room.

He fell against the wall outside and slid to the floor, sobbing quietly.

Harry wiped his nose on his sleeve and he was the furthest thing from okay he had ever been. He didn’t see fucking Eleanor wiping away Louis’ tears, or bringing him down from nightmares, or loving him with everything she had. He didn’t see her sacrificing every little thing she had to make sure he’s happy and he sure as fuck didn’t see her in love with her best friend and knowing he will never love her back!

He gasped for air and made an awful, guttural noise as he was wracked with sobs. Rubbing his eyes with his fists, he realized that the worst part of this whole thing was probably that out of all the things Louis loved in all the world, Harry would never, ever be one of them.


End file.
